Former MI5 Head Gives Backhanded Support to David Kelly

The former head of Britains's MI5, Lady Manningham-Buller, gave testimony on Tuesday before the Chilcot Committee, which Lyndon LaRouche characterized as "backhanded support to David Kelly," the British weapons expert who was found dead, shortly after criticizing the Tony Blair for "sexing up" a report on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. Kelly's death was deemed a suicide by the Blair-appointed Hutton Commission, but evidence presented in an effort to reopen the case points in the direction of a politically motivated homicide.

In her testimony, Lady Manningham-Buller, who led MI5 from 2002 to 2007, said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had greatly increased the terrorist threat to Britain itself and that intelligence available before the Iraq war had not been sufficient to justify the invasion of that country. She testified: "There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection [between the government of Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001], and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and I have never seen anything to make me change my mind."

She said "it was not a judgment that found favor with some parts of the American machine. That is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

She said Britian relied on fragmentary intelligence before invading Iraq and that MI5 had not believed that Mr. Hussein was amassing unconventional weapons in Iraq, as the government contended. "The belief that Iraq might use such weapons wasn't a concern in either the short term or the medium term to my colleagues and myself."